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Tatas to build world's cheapest home for Euro 500

timesofindia.indiatimes.com

11–20 of 49 posts

Re: Tatas to build world's cheapest home for Euro 500

#11
I have come across some very safe, efficient, and cheap building designs that I would love to build on some land. In the U.S., it is very hard to go through all the paperwork to get it built. If I had someone put a rickety frame in the ground and slap on some drywall, it would be easy as pie to get the paperwork done.

The U.S. building code seems broken from my perspective. Cheap homes are not hard.

Re: Tatas to build world's cheapest home for Euro 500

#12
post #2

And so it starts. A decade or two after opening up the economy, Indian companies have started moving up the value chain, creating solutions to local problems instead of mindlessly building things designed elsewhere. Great to see this happen in my lifetime.

Tata seems to relish creating products for the bottom of the pyramid that no other corporation will touch. What they are doing reaffirms my faith in capitalism.

The article mentions that these homes are targeted at the beneficiaries of the Indira Awaas Yojana - a government subsidy program. The article also mentions that other companies are going after the same market (with limited success).

Re: Tatas to build world's cheapest home for Euro 500

#13
post #3

The Tata group is probably the only major group in India which prides itself in hardcore engineering. Think of them like the "Google" of India. Kudos to them for tackling India's problems.

The Tatas have consistently impressed me. They're like Andrew Carnegie of India. The patriarch Jamsetji Tata (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jamsetji_Tata) help setup the Indian Institute of Science (it is so intimately connected that in local parlance it is often referred to as the Tata Institute) and TIFR both of which are premier research institutions in India. Another Tata, JRD Tata is the most well known though and helped grow and diversify the Tata industry in the 20th century. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._R._D._Tata)

For those unfamiliar the Tata industry is better compared to GE than Google in terms of its diversification. They are involved in the energy, IT, automotive, steel, and I'm sure a whole bunch of other sectors.

Re: Tatas to build world's cheapest home for Euro 500

#14
Considering that 40% of Indians earn less than 1.25$ a day, this still is not going to completely solve the problems faced by the "average person" in India. Anyone who can afford this house is probably working in one of the cities where the cost of land would be at least 10 times the cost of the actual house. So who would actually be able to use this?

Re: Tatas to build world's cheapest home for Euro 500

#15
As with most things coming out of India, I would take this with a grain of salt. There've been promises of things like a $10 laptop and a $35 tablet in the past. When (if ever) they actually materialized, however, the price was either much higher or the quality/features much lower than promised.

Relatedly, this is a big difference between India and China. In China, when the CPC decides to do something, it happens, no matter how many heads roll in the process. One of India's biggest failures has been its inability to keep up with its promises.

Re: Tatas to build world's cheapest home for Euro 500

#16

As with most things coming out of India, I would take this with a grain of salt. There've been promises of things like a $10 laptop and a $35 tablet in the past. When (if ever) they actually materialized, however, the price was either much higher or the quality/features much lower than promised. Relatedly, this is a big difference between India and China. In China, when the CPC decides to do something, it happens, no…

To be honest, $10 laptop or $35 tablet; were Govt. funded organizations fighting for some limelight.When some politician appeared on news channels with a prototype, you know where the project was going.

This is more of Tatas attempt to fix things, but unlike Nano Car project, govt. does have some involvement here, so I am not holding my breadth.

And yeah like it or not, it is good that Govt stops if something is not popular. Thank god for that.

Re: Tatas to build world's cheapest home for Euro 500

#17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tata seems to relish creating products for the bottom of the pyramid that no other corporation will touch. What they are doing reaffirms my faith in capitalism.

The article mentions that these homes are targeted at the beneficiaries of the Indira Awaas Yojana - a government subsidy program. The article also mentions that other companies are going after the same market (with limited success).

Actually there were quite a few companies trying to make a sub $2000 car but only the tatas succeeded albeit at a slightly higher price.

Yes there is a government subsidy for the lowest cost home but in India relying on the government keeping the same policy for more than 4 years is a little insane.

Re: Tatas to build world's cheapest home for Euro 500

#18
post #14

Considering that 40% of Indians earn less than 1.25$ a day, this still is not going to completely solve the problems faced by the "average person" in India. Anyone who can afford this house is probably working in one of the cities where the cost of land would be at least 10 times the cost of the actual house. So who would actually be able to use this?

This would mean that the value of one of these cheap tiny houses is about the price of three years worth of income. In America, a house (including land) averages around $200k to $250k in a fairly populated area (Denver, Portland, Seattle, etc - you can forget about SF) which comes in at around three years or four years of income. It would seem kind of weird to be marketing a $200k home as a "cheap solution" for the poor.

Re: Tatas to build world's cheapest home for Euro 500

#20

As with most things coming out of India, I would take this with a grain of salt. There've been promises of things like a $10 laptop and a $35 tablet in the past. When (if ever) they actually materialized, however, the price was either much higher or the quality/features much lower than promised. Relatedly, this is a big difference between India and China. In China, when the CPC decides to do something, it happens, no…

No one in India bought that $35 tablet news since it was by the government.

Remember, in China developments happen with more government participation whereas in India developments happen with lesser government participation.

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